Overlawyered letters

I noticed that you carried the item (May 20) about the lawsuit against the jail architect et al because the serial killer who hanged himself couldn't be reasonably monitored by jailers. I see your point, but I noticed the story for what might be approaching the opposite angle: According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (the same story you linked to), Travis hanged himself while he had a pillowcase over his head, toilet paper in his nostrils, a washcloth in his mouth, and, and, and, his hands tied behind his back. I'm ready to ask U. of Missouri to set up a Maury Travis memorial gymnastics scholarship. But I view the lawsuit as sort of a kitchen sink set of claims by a family with some pretty good evidence that he might have been abughraibed. -- Chuck Shepherd, News of the Weird

Yes, the episode does seem more than a little fishy. And yet we also noticed (relying, once again, on the same Post-Dispatch piece) that the deceased "had interest and skills in bondage", possibly accounting for his ability to restrain himself in impossible-sounding ways, and that the mother's lawyer is curiously unaggressive (see last few lines of story) about advancing the notion that Travis was murdered. No indication appears whether the authenticity of the suicide note has been questioned. At any rate, as reader Shepherd (whose weekly column is one of the longstanding delights of American journalism) correctly notes, the aspect of the suit that most got our antennae to waving was its avidity in assigning blame to so many different defendants including the prison's architect and builder. -- ed.

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

First, a little background about me. I am a trial lawyer in Chicago. I am a firm believer in our legal system and think it is the best in the world. Having said that, I recognize that the system, well, more precisely, some of the lawyers who work within it, need to re-evaluate their "contributions". They are simply too many stupid lawsuits being filed, and as a result, all trial lawyers are being tarred with the same brush.

It is important to point out some of the more egregious examples and your site does a good job of doing just that. (I still can't believe some jury awarded nearly 3 million to a girl who alleged her eating disorder was due to her coach's yelling). I don't always agree with what I see, but I do read it (and sometimes cite to your blog in my blog, closing argument@blogspot.com).

Keep up the good work.

Mark P. Loftus [site]

We're honored by these kind comments and hope we can live up to them. Not all of Mr. Loftus's colleagues in the legal profession share his generous view of our efforts, as the adjacent letter from Mr. Stevens makes clear -- W.O.

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

In your May 3 item about the developmentally disabled child who died after sticking his head through an open school bus window, you wrote: "[the mother's] lawyer, Robert York, said in particular that the fatality could have been averted 'if the bus's windows had been blocked from opening more than a few inches'. The article makes no mention of what such a recommendation might mean for the safety of school bus passengers in other situations, such as emergency evacuations." (Emphasis added).

The highlighted portion of your statement is provocative indeed. We would be wise not to impose limits on bus-window openings for the purpose of protecting the (lamentably disabled) few, at the possible expense of the safety of the millions of children who ride school buses every day.

The problem with this reasoning, as everyone who has seen a school bus knows, is that school bus windows are not designed for evacuations. I offer a visual aid.

As you will note, school bus windows include two rectangular glass panes, an upper and a lower, of equal size. The lower is stationary, and cannot be opened. A window is opened by lowering the upper glass pane so that it is positioned directly inside the lower glass pane. The largest opening that can be achieved is approximately the size of one of the rectangular glass panes. School children are not instructed to try to exit the bus through these windows in the event of an emergency, presumably in part because the windows openings are smaller than school-aged children.

Instead, school buses are provided with an emergency exit door at the rear, and multiple emergency windows (see the picture linked above). Emergency windows are designed such that the entire window unit, including BOTH glass panes and the window frame are removed, providing a realistic evacuation exit. The efficacy of emergency windows is not in the least dependent on how far the individual upper glass pane can be opened.

In light of this, it is no wonder that "the article makes no mention of what such a recommendation might mean for the safety of school bus passengers in other situations, such as emergency evacuations." Your somber suggestion that limiting the amoung bus windows can be opened would hinder school-bus evacuations, while eminently reasonable on the surface, is in fact totally misleading. No matter whether this is a result of intellectual dishonesty or simple laziness on your part, in my view it seriously compromises your credibility.

Whether or not the underlying lawsuit is meritorious, your disingenuous commentary has betrayed you as a cynic who is willing to distort the truth to appeal to people in the name of common sense to join your tort-law reform crusade. I do not believe such tactics are honorable or, ultimately, persuasive.
-- C. Donald Stevens, Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky, Washington, D.C.

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (2)

I'm a long time reader, but I think this is the first time I've emailed you. I really appreciate what you do. I wanted to comment on your May 18 statement: "in March Jamie Olis, a mid-level executive at natural gas firm Dynegy, was found guilty of accounting fraud in a scheme to please Wall Street by hyping earnings and sentenced to 24 years in prison. The guy would have been a lot better off to have gunned down someone on the street instead, or even tried to grow psychedelic mushrooms".

While I do feel that such a sentence at least appears silly, and I don't know how much money was involved, there is one thing to think about: how many lives' worth of work was he trying to steal? I'm not saying that means he should get more jail time than murder (I think it should be a minimum life sentence for Murder One), but theft on the magnitude of millions of dollars is on the same scale, in many ways, as murder. Enron, for instance -- if the average person makes 2 million (constant as of 2000) dollars in their lifetime, and I steal 200 million dollars, I just stole 100 people's life's work. When considered that way, I would put it on the same scale as murder. -- David Allen, Texas

According to news accounts, the judge in the case settled on an estimate of harm to investors of $105 million from the accounting misrepresentations that Olis helped devise. Perhaps relevant, the scheme did not siphon money into Olis's own pocket, but was aimed at benefiting his employer. For more, see Susan Warren, Wall Street Journal, May 20, reprinted at WSJ Career Journal site; Tom Kirkendall, May 20 -- W.O.

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2)